Honey breakfast for ‘Honeyscribe’ Amy Shelton

(c) Amy Shelton

Amy Shelton is a ‘honeyscribe’. She tells me that ‘In Ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs document the role of the honeyscribe tasked to record every drop of honey produced’ and she has taken on this role as a contemporary artist producing beautiful, intricate, thought-provoking works inspired by conversations and collaborations with a range of people engaged with bees. She’s also worked on an artists’ book with poet and novelist John Burnside, and a second edition of this title,  Melissographia, will be out shortly.

You’d be disappointed if she didn’t have a favourite way to eat honey. This is how she describes it…

Every morning I do this – it’s a type of ritual.

I spoon 3 large dessert spoons of live creamy Greek-style yogurt into my favorite lovely bowl made by the potter Svend Bayer. I then add 2 large handfuls of frozen raspberries which I grow in my garden, and then freeze to keep me in this delicious fruit for as long as possible throughout the year. I then sprinkle a desert spoonful of golden linseeds over the raspberries, add a handful of raisins, and then swirl a very large spoonful of runny honey over the top. The honey slightly solidifies when it contacts the frozen raspberries and this is the thing I love. The honey is almost chewy. It gets me out of bed in the morning just thinking about it…

It seems an almost mythical breakfast; I’m going to try it for myself and see whether it can turn me, too, into a gifted visual artist…